Original poetry

RANGA 10, ME 0

The word “orangutan” is gargled in the throats of the Maori, masticated in the mouths of the Bushmen, and expectorated by colonists in the streets of Sydney until it morphs into the idiom for “redhead.”

You are the ferocious ranga in my life.

Sitting across the table from me at the coffee house, with your fiery hair lit up like some personal bonfire, you cause me to lose focus on the conversation.

Today your coiffure is upswept and angry, spewing out amber tendrils like some ignited Medusa.

I can only throw blankets of smothering words over your fireballs of tension.

How is it that you can sit there so calmly, as if everything is normal, while your hair spontaneously combusts?

I feel like Dante caught up in my own little inferno.

Then, rather unexpectedly, the flames dramatically dissipate into pathetic ringlets of evaporating smoke.

You twist the glowing ashes into a conservative bun and narrow your eyes at me as if to ask: “Are you listening to me?”